IRREPRESSIBLE –THE BECKETT HEROINE WHO WON’T GIVE UP
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days comes streaming live online from the Olympia Theatre on Saturday Jan 30 (7.15pm to 9.45pm : 15-minute interval) with Síobhán McSweeney as Winnie and Marty Rea as her monosyllabic husband Willie. When first produced, it was considered a classic piece of theatrical absurdity, with Winnie up to her waist in sand in the first half and up to her neck in it in the second, while she occasionally consults the contents of her handbag for inspiration.
But Winnie is never gloomy, even at her failed attempts to raise a conversation with Willie. She almost challenges the world to make her miserable. She can look like the ultimate doormat for her useless husband, but that’s not how she reacts. The play can be very funny despite its apparent gloom. Many people might see their present position as Winnielike, but Winnie never lets her situation get her down. She’s not just a pathetic woman fighting a losing battle: almost anything can be used to supply her with another Happy Day.
Tickets: landmarkproductions. ie €25/€15 (concessions) let you watch the show live on one device anywhere in the world.
To be ‘in the limelight’ comes from a lighting device used in some theatres before the advent of gas and electricity. But it took on a dramatic lease of life during the 1899/1900 American tour of Sir Henry Irving, the most celebrated actor/manager of the Victorian era.
On the morning after Irving’s first appearance in the Kansas Opera House, a sensational story appeared in the local press. Irving, it stated, was dying, and he was only kept alive by the use of oxygen stored in special tanks that had to be transported with him wherever he was performing.
The young reporter who wrote the story had done a thorough investigation to support his claim. He had got into the theatre as a stagehand and had seen for himself the oxygen tanks at various places around the stage. To confirm his story he had tried to speak to Irving in his dressing room, but had been rapidly dismissed by people working on the show.
Undaunted, he hung around, and saw Irving dashing into his dressing room at the end of one act ‘to be reinvigorated.’ And another clue: to prevent any of the lifegiving oxygen escaping, even the dressing room keyhole had been blocked.
Sensational indeed, but an early example of fake news: not malicious, just the delusion of an enthusiastic young man with a fertile imagination. There were indeed tanks of oxygen and hydrogen gas in the theatre. A large consignment of them accompanied Irving everywhere because he couldn’t get them easily on tour.
And they were used, not for lung problems, but because Irving preferred the stage to be lit literally by limelight, instead of the modern electric spotlights that were available in the Opera House.
In the 1830s limelight had started to replace candles in theatres. The process was complicated. A cylindrical block of calcium was heated using burning jets of oxygen and hydrogen. It was a versatile lighting system that could be varied to give a spotlight, sunshine, moonlight or any variant for atmosphere.
But it needed an operator to move the block of calcium and the gas tanks regularly around the stage. All of which was unknown to the young reporter.
‘Winnie is never gloomy – she never lets her situation get her down’
‘An early example of fake news, not malicious just delusional’
Initially, there was little room to store all the equipment in the theatre, so some red gas tanks had been left outside, and the reporter, seeing them, added a dubious two and two together in the hope of a major scoop.
The story, is taken from Dublinborn Bram Stoker’s book Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. It’s not recorded what became of the young reporter.
Ironically, although the Kansas Opera House used electric lighting and had long since stopped using candles and gas, it was burnt to the ground the following year. Fortunately nobody was killed, because the show had finished early and the audience was gone.
There was no such fortunate ending three years later, when The Iroquois Theatre in Chicago was destroyed in a horrendous fire caused by a spark from a stage light.
Over 600 people died in the inferno.IthadopenedinNovember and was totally destroyed five weeks later, December 30, when the theatre was packed with 1,700 people, mostly women and children enjoying a holiday outing.
The Iroquois had been advertised as ‘Totally Fireproof’ just as the Titanic nine years later would be billed as unsinkable.